The harbour with Cap Canaille behind at golden hour

Cassis harbour is a small working port ringed by pastel houses, café awnings and traditional wooden pointus moored stern-to along the quay. What lifts it above every other Provençal harbour is what stands behind: Cap Canaille, a wall of ochre and red rock rising straight out of the sea to nearly four hundred metres, filling the eastern side of the bay.

The composition writes itself. Shoot from the Quai des Baux across the water and you get masts, coloured facades and the cliff stacked in one frame; walk to the harbour mouth and the cliff dominates with the town small beneath it. Close in, the boats, nets and painted hulls give texture for tighter frames without moving more than a few metres.

Golden hour is the reason to be here in the evening. The sun sets behind the town to the west, so Cap Canaille takes the last direct light head-on and turns properly red — twenty minutes of colour that no other time of day gives you. Morning is quiet and clean but the cliff is in its own shadow. Blue hour afterwards, with the quay lights on and the water flat, is the strongest frame of all for couples.

Practical: the quays are pedestrian and easy, but the harbourside is café terraces and working boats, so keep the walkway clear. Parking in Cassis is limited and paid, and in July and August the town car parks fill by mid-morning — the park-and-ride from the edge of town is the sane approach. The mistral turns the bay choppy and cold; when it blows, the harbour is still workable while the calanques are not.